I can sing in tune now, but I have to work really hard on it to make sure that I don’t exercise one of my great talents, which is the ability to sing in three keys at the same time.
ALAN ALDAI’m very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they’re making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can’t put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn’t be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.
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Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I’d said in a book I wrote that I wasn’t a believer.
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[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.
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When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
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I’ve played a murderer, so certainly I think I can play a Republican.
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Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
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When does she do all this thinking? We’re together all the time but she thinks deeply about things and with feeling and she can remember the facts. We’ve been married 48 years.
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I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
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I’ve never tried to manipulate my image.
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And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to.
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I’m in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.
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I’m not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn’t interest me.
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The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.
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Everyone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.
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Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in. If you challenge your own, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others.
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